that they make little sepulchres in the bark of trees, and bury each other—­alive, if they can; and they hold vestries, and have burial boards.  They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of that kind.  I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours, watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them.  Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch for me.’

‘How interesting, how noble of you,’ exclaimed the other ladies; and then they began to talk about bonnets, and about Mr. Smithson, to speculate how much money this house and all his other houses had cost him, and to wonder if he was really rich, or if he were only one of those great financial windbags which so often explode and leave the world aghast, marvelling at the ease with which it has been deluded.

They wondered, too, whether Lady Lesbia Haselden meant to marry him.

‘Of course she does, my dear,’ answered Mrs. Mostyn, decisively.

’You don’t suppose that after having studied the habits of gnats I cannot read such a poor shallow creature as a silly vain girl.  Of course Lady Lesbia means to marry Mr. Smithson’s fine houses; and she is only amusing herself and swelling her own importance by letting him dangle in a kind of suspense which is not suspense; for he knows as well as she does that she means to have him.’

The next day was given up, first to seeing the house, an amusement which lasted very well for an hour or so after breakfast, and then to wandering in a desultory manner, to rowing and canoeing, and a little sailing, and a good deal of screaming and pretty timidity upon the blue bright river; to gathering wild flowers and ferns in rustic lanes, and to an al fresco luncheon in the wood at Medmenham, and then dinner, and then music, an evening spent half within and half without the music-room, cigarettes sparkling, like glowworms on the terrace, tall talk from Mr. Meander, long quotations from his own muse and that of Rossetti, a little Shelley, a little Keats, a good deal of Swinburne.  The festivities were late on this second evening, as Mr. Smithson had invited a good many people from the neighbourhood, but the house party were not the less early on the following morning, which was the first Henley day.

It was a peerless morning, and all the brasswork of Mr. Smithson’s launch sparkled and shone in the sun, as she lay in front of the terrace.  A wooden pier, a portable construction, was thrown out from the terrace steps, to enable the company to go on board the launch without the possibility of wet feet or damaged raiment.